


Watching

by clare_dragonfly



Category: The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/pseuds/clare_dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some people Liza likes to watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/gifts).



Liza can’t touch her. Not in any proper way; not in any any way. Not really.

But she truly can watch her. And watch her she does. Watch her invisible, sometimes. Watch her visible, maybe hoping to be watched right back. But it never seems to happen.

Unless she’s watching invisible. But Liza daren’t hope too much for that. It wouldn’t be right and it wouldn’t be proper and it would break poor Liza’s already thrice-broken heart if she hoped too much and it didn’t come true.

She’s on the other side of the graveyard fence, see. Consecrated ground. Buried all nice like a real person, a Godly person, the kind of person that Liza could never be. Never wanted to be. But she can look at it and take an interest in it. Interesting to watch, it is.

Not that anybody’s all too Godly these days. Maybe the boy, that Bod. The living boy. But not Miss Sophia Wheatcroft. For if they were Godly all proper, they wouldn’t be here on this earth trapped in the graveyard, would they? They’d be gone up to heaven or wherever it is the Godly people do.

Liza wondered, when she first found herself here, if this weren’t the hell that the Godly people spoke of. But it were too nice, too quiet. Couldn’t be Hell. It was just Earth, and there wasn’t nothing else.

Good thing, too. Proved Liza right. She’s pretty pleased with always being right.

Liza likes to get up all close to the fence sometimes, watch Sophia from as close up as she can get. Not too close up. But not too far away, neither. And she thinks all she wants to do is watch.

Until one night Liza gets up to the fence, silvery and visible in the moonlight, and Miss Sophia is looking right back through it.

Liza backs up so fast she trips over her own feet and falls into the mud, or would, if she didn’t have the neat knack of falling right through the mud and then getting back up again. Easy to do when you’re a ghost. Harder to recover the right way, though, at least when the girl you like to watch is watching you right back.

“What’re you doing here?” she squawks.

“Just looking,” says Miss Sophia in her soft, pretty voice. She speaks all proper and perfect, way they taught her to up in one of her fancy schools.

“Well this ain’t yer place,” says Liza, managing to get back to her feet but not taking herself any closer to Miss Sophia. Not like she wants to.

“I’m still in the graveyard, aren’t I?” Miss Sophia speaks like she’s singing a song, a real pretty old one. And she gets even prettier when she smiles at Liza. “We have this nice fence here separating your part from mine.”

“You oughtn’t to be socializin’ with the poor folk like me,” says Liza, brushing off her dress even though she’s dead and therefore so is her dress and the mud doesn’t really cling to her dress.

“I didn’t mean to socialize,” says Miss Sophia. “But you were right there. Just as close to the fence as I am. And you spoke to me first.”

So she did. This stumps Liza. Here she was all ready for a good argument and now she can’t figure out what to say next.

Miss Sophia smiles bigger, showing her teeth, like she knows Liza’s silence means she can’t think of anything more to argue. “I don’t mind socializing with poor folk,” she says. “Everyone is dead now, the same as everyone else, aren’t they? I think there’s a much bigger difference between us and the live folk than there is between you and me.”

Liza can’t argue with this, either, and it’s annoying her that she can’t find anything to argue with, and annoying her more that Miss Sophia is still standing there and smiling, all pretty and pearly and perfect. But it doesn’t annoy her so much that she can bear to walk away.

Miss Sophia blinks her pretty eyelashes. They don’t have color no more, of course, them being ghosts and all, but Liza thinks that Miss Sophia probably had pretty golden hair, and her eyelashes were pretty and golden and almost see-through, like they are now. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you a personal question?”

Liza blushes. You wouldn’t think ghosts could blush, and usually they can’t, but the ghost of a witch is a special thing, even if it isn’t always special in the way that Liza would prefer it to be. “Yeah, you can ask,” she mutters, because she can’t see any right way to say no and anyway, she’s kind of hoping that Miss Sophia is hoping for the answer that Liza will have to give if she’s being truthful, and she always tries to be truthful even if it isn’t the truth in the way that other folk would like to hear it.

“How did you die?”

Liza blinks and goggles at Miss Sophia and doesn’t know what to say for a moment because that’s not the question she was expecting. She never expects that question at all. The only time she had to explain it was to the live boy, and that was more because she wanted to tell him then because he wanted to know. She likes telling about how she died, when she gets the chance. “I’m a witch,” she says at last. “Don’t you know how I died?”

Miss Sophia shakes her head, her smile fading. “They don’t have any witches where I’m from. I only know that you’re buried in the other part of the graveyard because you’re a witch. I know it’s something illegal.”

Liza frowns and puts her head to the side, trying to figure out how Miss Sophia could have gotten by for so long without knowing about witches. “When were you buried here?”

Miss Sophia’s eyes widen, then she smiles. “1902,” she says proudly. “Over one hundred years ago.”

Liza goggles some more. “But that be so recent. I been buried… five times what you have. No, ten times. A lot more’n that. I didn’t know anybody was buried that recent.”

“I think my parents were the last ones,” says Miss Sophia. “They died only a few years after I did. I was very pleased to have them come and join me. They were a little upset, though.”

“Didn’t they want to see you?” Liza asks, creeping closer to the fence despite herself.

“Oh, they did,” says Miss Sophia. “But they thought we would all be up in heaven with the angels.”

Liza nods as though she knows something. “I never thought I’d go there. Me being a witch and all.”

“And now we’re back on the topic of the conversation,” says Miss Sophia triumphantly. “How did you die?”

So Liza tells her the story, the whole story of how they drowned her and burned her and the curse she laid on them came true so that none of them can even bother her in the graveyard, and Miss Sophia Wheatcroft seems to appreciate it.

“How old were you?” she asks at last.

“I were sixteen years old,” says Liza.

“But that’s awfully young,” says Miss Sophia. “You were only a child. Didn’t they take into account how young you were?”

“I weren’t no child,” says Liza indignantly. “I were a full grown lady and I had my laundry business and—and I knew it and so did they. Besides, nobody as accused me was all that much older. Why, how old were you when you died?”

“I was seventeen years old and I was to marry Mr. Arthur Davies in a year’s time,” says Miss Sophia.

“You were almost as young as me,” says Liza.

Miss Sophia nods. “But no one killed me. Not on purpose. Though I have come to understand that someone might have come close to me with the disease and I might have caught it from them.”

“A disease like the plague?” Liza says, interested. She takes a step closer. Miss Sophia is still pressed up closed to the fence. “You sure it weren’t a witch gave you it?”

“I can’t say for certain,” says Miss Sophia. “But it wasn’t the plague. It was called tuberculosis and I had it for months before I died. It made me cough a lot and it was hard to breathe. I had to lie down most of the time.”

Liza nods with satisfaction. “I bet it were a witch gave you it. What happened to Mr. Arthur Davies? He get the tubercles too?”

Miss Sophia shakes her head. “My parents said he was to marry someone else when they died, though they didn’t know if it ever happened. I haven’t seen him or her or anyone else new in the graveyard since then. Except for that live boy, of course.”

“I seen him too,” says Liza. “But he probably don’t know what happened to your man.”

Miss Sophia shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what he did. Do you think the woman he married was the witch, and she killed me?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” says Liza. “I could get a man without using my witch work for it but you’re so pretty, I bet she couldn’t get him away from you without doing some real good witch work.”

Miss Sophia frowns. “I hope that isn’t what happened. She should have just asked me. I didn’t know him very well. I wouldn’t have minded giving him up. It was all my parents’ idea anyway, getting married. I suppose I had to do it but it seemed like an awful lot of work.”

“I never wanted to get married neither,” agrees Liza. “It just means some man’s in charge of you and you got to carry his babies and feed them and all. I liked being in charge of my own life.”

“I never got to be in charge of my own life,” says Miss Sophia. “Maybe that’s why I don’t mind being dead.”

“I don’t mind it either,” says Liza, with a quick glance at her special own headstone. “I wouldn’t have minded living for a little longer and I sure wouldn’t have minded having an easier way to die but at least this way I don’t have to work.”

Miss Sophia laughs, the sound sudden and high and sound as though it could reach up to the moon and pierce it through the middle. “I never had to work and my mother always told me that I would never have to. But I thought being with a man sounded like the same thing that other people complained about. What was it like to work?”

And that question shocks Liza even more than the other question did, because who doesn’t know what it’s like to work? It’s hard for her to figure out a way to explain it to someone who doesn’t know anything about it, but Miss Sophia seems to like her clumsy explanations anyway. And so they talk until it starts to get light and it’s time to get to bed, and Liza inches closer and closer to the fence until her feet are almost touching the consecrated ground, where she can’t go on account of being a witch, which she never minded before but now she realizes that there isn’t just a fence between her and Miss Sophia Wheatcroft.

Miss Sophia looks up at the stars which are starting to fade in the sky. “Can we talk again tomorrow? I’ve had such a lovely time.”

“Course we can,” says Liza. “We can talk anytime. I’ll always be here.” And she blushes again, the curse of a witch’s ghost, and Miss Sophia didn’t seem to see it before but she seems to see it now, and she smiles a little and reaches right through a gap in the fence.

“Can you do that?” whispers Liza, baffled, but she guesses that Miss Sophia can because Miss Sophia is doing it right now, reaching through the fence and taking Liza’s arm and pulling her close so they’re both squashed up against the iron.

“Does it hurt you?” Miss Sophia murmurs. “If you’re over the consecrated ground?”

Liza shakes her head, a very small gesture because Miss Sophia’s face is so close to hers. “I just can’t get on it.”

“Good,” says Miss Sophia, and she reaches through with her other hand and pulls Liza’s face right up to the fence, and she kisses her on the lips.

It doesn’t feel like anything, of course, because they’re both dead, but it’s a kiss and it’s there and the meaning of it is more than the feeling anyway.

Miss Sophia lets go of Liza and walks away. She keeps looking at Liza. Liza keeps looking at her until the stars are gone and the sun is up and there’s nothing to see no more.


End file.
